I recently bought a new laptop that came pre-installed with Windows Vista Home Premium. While waiting for the release of Windows 7, I got comfortable with my system and customized all of my settings including the system tray’s notification icons. All was well and my new laptop began feeling like home. That is, until this morning when Automatic Updates rolled out Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista (KB94846) (more info). After the update was applied, system notification icons for the Volume Mixer and Network were missing.
I had heard of this happening and recalled that everyone had recommended using System Restore to roll the system back. Now why would I want to do that? Service Pack 2 provides a slew of security updates that I’d like to have on my system. Wouldn’t it be better instead to fix the problem properly?
To begin, eliminate any fluke possibility by making sure that the system notification icons aren’t simply disabled.
Enabling System Notification Icons in Windows Vista:
If you can do this, your system doesn’t have any problems and all should be well again. If however, like me, these options are disabled and appear grayed out, you will need to implement a simple registry fix in order to make them available again.
Clearing the Notification Icon Settings in the Registry:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\TrayNotify
As always, please backup your registry before attempting to make any changes!